On 1 December 1482, an unfortunate student at the University of Padua made a large red inkblot in this precious edition of Livy’s History of Rome. He was annotating Livy’s account of Hannibal’s invasion, giving brief summaries of the narrative; ‘Fabius Pictor sent to Delphi to the oracle’ and so forth. After several pages, he lost concentration and made a large glaring blot. All he could do was ‘own’ it – ‘I stupidly made this blot on the first of December 1482’ – and press on. Three weeks later, reaching the end of Livy’s account of the war, he proudly wrote, ‘I have completed this task studiously.’

The book he was annotating had been produced in nearby Venice in 1470, a year after the first printed edition of Livy appeared in Rome. The work of the German printer Wendelin, it is a particularly lovely specimen, the handsome typeface complemented by luxuriously illuminated initials with white vinestems in glorious gold and colours. When the book left the Italian peninsula we do not know, but we can reconstruct part of its journey from Padua to Cambridge. One of the early pages has a floral border and coat of arms added in a distinctively northern style, very likely Austrian, around 1500, suggesting a stay there. But it was to move on, into the library of that voracious bibliophile, John Moore, before coming to the University of Cambridge, thanks to the generosity of George I. In fact, it was only half of Livy’s lengthy History. Our Paduan student had been working on the second of two volumes. By the time it reached Moore’s library, it had become separated from volume 1. In 1784, to complete the pair a London bookseller, George Nicol, gave to the University a first volume of Wendelin’s 1470 edition, acquired from the sale of the library of another famous book collector, Robert Hoblyn (1710–1756). The two volumes had not originally gone together, as differences in the illumination make clear, but this second volume is also beautifully decorated in Venetian style, with a heading to the whole work added by hand in gold. Nicol’s letter of donation remains attached to the endpapers. On it, the Librarian has added a few words of celebration. This edition, he writes, is not in ‘any known Library in England’. Together, he continues (presumably with a glint in his eye), ‘the 2 Vols are worth at least 50 £!’.

Essay by Professor Mary Beard